Without a Trace…

Pogrom, Sweatshop, Gulag: The Jewish Radical Odyssey of Noah and Miril London

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This biography gives an inside story of US and Soviet Communism, their similarities and parallels, and the Soviet bureaucracy in the Stalin era. Unprecedented research in Yiddish-language Jewish archives and underresearched Soviet archives enable genuine revelations. This book tells you how revolution in Russia, twentieth-century Jewish history, US and Russian labor history and the evolution of Stalinism are intertwined threads. They link historical moments on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and around the world. The London story has much to say about the present day world and prospects for the future.
The tragic odyssey of the Londons gives insight into the nature and origins of Stalinism and the causes of the "Great Terror," the most mysterious episode of Soviet history. And Noah London's career as a leader of the Stalinist industrial revolution in the Donbass who became a secret dissident due to the Ukrainian famine sheds vital light on today's war-torn Donbass.
Copyright Year:
2026
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-74538-4
Publication:
24 Nov 2025
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-73062-5
Publication:
27 Nov 2025
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John D. Holmes, Ph.D. (2008), University of California Berkeley. He is currently a history instructor at Merritt College in Oakland, California. He has about a third of a century of experience in the labor movement, first in the printing industry and then in academic unionism. He has held a number of lower level union posts, and has published a number of articles on Jewish, labor and Soviet history.
"John Holmes has devoted himself to uncovering the meaning of London’s life which meant careful examination of the different factions within Bund socialism, exploring the ins and outs of labor politics in New York in early decades of the 20th. Century, then studying, with the help of new archival materials, the politics of water in the Ukraine under a system of economic planning and party autocracy, and then following (again with the help of the archives) the tortuous political swings of the Stalinist regime in the 1930s, leading up to the purges.
So what does Holmes come up with—apart from a magnificent narrative? I was struck by his explanation of the purges. His detailed analysis suggests the convergence of two processes. On the one hand there was the now familiar politics of upward mobility within the Stalinist party state, but, on the other hand, there was the break neck speed of economic development that inevitably led to planning failures. These might look as though they are the result of deliberate wrecking, but in fact they were the response of enterprise managers bent on an impossible mission. There is no need to look for any conspiracy to explain the purges.
More generally, through the biography of Noah London, Holmes has produced a biography of socialism in the twentieth century, from its pre-Soviet beginnings, to the Russian Revolution, to the export of communism, and then to the way the revolution turned in on itself from which it never really recovered."
—Michael B. Burawoy

“John Holmes' book is a feat of historical recovery, restoring Noah London to his place in the history of the American left and, notably, Stalinist Russia.”
—David Brody

“A long-awaited text from the era of the Yiddish Left, this valuable book will be read with interest and pleasure by scholars of the Russian Revolution, the immigrant Left in the US at large, and the Yiddish contingent in US culture and politics."
—Paul Buhle

"This book, representing years of research in archives in the United States and the former Soviet Union in multiple languages, tells a fascinating story that is crucial for scholars of the left and labor movement in the United States, the Soviet Union, and of transnational Jewish radicalism. Holmes' telling of the Londons' story has more drama than many novels."
—Jacob A. Zumoff, New Jersey City University
Acknowledgements
List of Figures

Introduction

Part 1 Russia and the Jewish Pale



1 Origins: Jewish Socialism and Noah and Miril London
 1 Motele
 2 Vilna and ‘Socialist Zionism’

2 The Revolution of 1905
 1 A Jewish Revolution in a Jewish Pale
 2 A Revolution in Decline
 3 Aftermath of a Jewish Revolution: Noah London, Lithuanians and Leather
 4 Noah London, Bundism, Bolshevism and Menshevism

Part 2 America (1910–1926)



3 Jewish Socialism and Garment Unionism in the Promised Land
 1 The American Dream: The Contradictions of Upward Mobility
 2 Noah London and the Men’s Clothing Industry
 3 The Untermans in the Promised Land: ‘New Womanhood’ in the Garment Industry
 4 Jewish Socialism and Garment Unionism in America
 5 The Dark Side of the American Dream
 6 ‘Industrial Democracy’ and the ‘Slaves of the Protocol’
 7 Progress and Poverty in Jewish Buffalo
 8 Jewish Socialism and the ‘Great War’ in Europe and America
 9 American Jewish Socialism and the Revolution of 1917

4 The Birth of American Jewish Communism
 1 The Jewish Socialist Federation, the Russian Revolution and Noah London
 2 Birth of the Left Wing
 3 The Jewish Communist Federation and Alexander Bittelman
 4 Noah London, the Workers Council Movement and the Spirit of 1919
 5 The Red Scare, the Steel Strike and Wilson’s War for Democracy
 6 The Proletaryer, the Russian Civil War and the Jewish Socialist Federation
 7 The Proletaryer and the ACWA
 8 Uniting the Jewish Communists

5 Jewish Communism and Garment Unionism
 1 Noah London’s Moment as Jewish Workers Federation Leader
 2 Birth Pangs of the Freiheit and the A Train
 3 Jewish Communism and the Garment Unions
 4 Noah London, United Fronts and Labor Parties
 5 Death Throes of the Underground
 6 Labor’s ‘Lean Years’ and American Jewish Communism

6 From Labor Movement to Radical Subculture
 1 Pepper Spray
 2 John Pepper’s Farmer-Labor Adventure
 3 London, Lore, ‘Loreism’ and Traditional Left-Wing Socialism in America
 4 From Garment Unionism to Cooperativism: The Birth of a Radical Subculture
 5 The United Workers Cooperative Colony: Camp ‘What, Me Worry?’
 6 Noah London as Party Leader and Immigrant Advocate?
 7 Communism and American Politics in 1924
 8 Noah London’s Marginalization: ‘Bolshevization’ and the Specter of Trotskyism
 9 Socialism in One Borough: ‘From Vegetarianism to Communism’
 10 ‘Our Cultural Front’
 11 ‘Building Socialism’: From the Bronx to the Donbass
 12 Postscript: What Happened to Other ‘Loreites’ after London Left?

Part 3 The Soviet Union



7 The New Promised Land
 1 The Polish Powderkeg
 2 The NEP in the New Promised Land
 3 Kharkov, the Capital of Soviet Ukraine
 4 ‘Coal: A Driving Force of the Social Revolution’
 5 The Donbass

8 The Stalinist Industrial Revolution
 1 Cultural Revolution and Class War
 2 Noah London’s ‘Struggle against Trotskyism’
 3 Shakhty: ‘Cultural Revolution’ in the Donbass

9 ‘Soviet Zionism’
 1 OZET and Evsektsiia
 2 Jewish Farmers and American dollars
 3 OZET, Noah London and Birobidzhan
 4 OZET and the Transformation of Soviet Jewry
 5 UkrOZET and the Londons
 6 UkrOZET, Birobidzhan and Noah London

10 Donbass Water and Noah London
 1 A ‘Sewer Communist’ Arrives in the Donbass
 2 Dneprostroi: A Peasant Buying a Gramophone?
 3 Noah London versus ‘Wrecking’ in the Donbass Water Industry
 4 Bureaucratic Rationalism and Soviet Industry
 5 Life at Donbassvodtrest

11 The Great Terror in Ukraine and the Donbass Water Crisis
 1 The 1937 Donbass Water Crisis
 2 The Great Purge at Donbassvodtrest
 3 Soviet Industrial Politics and the Donbass Water Commission
 4 Why Was There a Water Crisis?

12 Soviet Politics in the 1930s and Noah London
 1 Present-Day Pipelines with Future Pipes?
 2 The ‘Unbelievable Results’ of the Stalinist ‘Second Revolution’
 3 ‘Moderation’, a Congress of Victors and Secret Dissidents
 4 Stalinist Party Purges and the Soviet Working Class
 5 The Fate of Pavel Postyshev
 6 Bureaucratic Privilege, American Relatives and the London Manuscript
 7 London and Ginzburg
 8 ‘Londonism’ versus ‘Piatakovism’
 9 On the Eve of the Great Terror

13 The Fate of Noah and Miril London
 1 War and Revolution
 2 The Industrial Context of the First Stage of the Great Terror
 3 The Purge of Noah London and the Soviet Oil Industry
 4 Donbass Water after the Great Terror
 5 Noah London’s Successor: A Sketch of the New Generation
 6 American Echoes
 7 The Fate of Miril London
 8 How the London Story Came to Light
 9 Final Epilogue: The Holocaust and Jewish Lithuania

Conclusion

Appendix A: The Bronx ‘Coops’ Manifesto
Appendix B: The London Manuscript
Appendix C: Noah London’s Letters to America
Appendix D: Miril London’s Letter to Beria
Annotated Bibliography of Noah London’s Writings
General Bibliography
Index
This book is especially relevant to specialists and students across all levels of Russian/Soviet, labor, Jewish, and left-wing history, as well as for libraries and the broader public.
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